Category: February 2013

In the spirit of the Jesuit tradition of a “lifetime love of learning,” the College of Arts & Sciences announces “Fast Break with CAS Faculty,” a pre-game lecture series. The goal of this program is to give alumni a taste of intellectual life on campus and an opportunity to learn about a range of topics from some of the College’s most engaging faculty.

The inaugural lecture will feature Dr. Randall M. Miller, Professor of History, speaking on “What Now? Obama, the Republicans, and the Meaning of the Election – For Now.” Dr. Miller will lead a discussion about how President Barack Obama’s re-election could be evidence of a major generational shift in methods, constituencies, and issues in politics. The event will take place before the men’s basketball game against George Washington University: February 23, 2:30 – 3:30 p.m., Wolfington Teletorium, Mandeville Hall. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Tom Fithian at 610-660-2301.

The faculty of the Biology Department and the Environmental Sciences Program, together with the staff of the Lower Merion Conservancy, have developed an environmental workshop to be held on campus on Thursday, March 7th.

The workshop will include sessions on the preservation of buildings and properties and storm water management. The workshop and all related activities are free and open to the public, thanks to a grant from the U. S. Department of Energy. All members of the SJU community (including students) are invited to attend. Advance registration, however, is required.

More information is available on the web at: http://www.sju.edu/stormwater

On the weekend of February 15-17, Saint Joseph’s University and the Honors Program hosted the 8th annual conference of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) Honors Programs. Directors and students from Jesuit institutions across the country met in the Haub Center to discuss a wide range of mutual interests.

The theme for the conference this year was “Scholarship and the Magis,” with directors and students sharing ideas about best practices concerning scholarly research and the Jesuit ideals that inform and inspire these various approaches. Directors offered program updates from the past year, discussed strategies for coping with the pressures of economic austerity, and reviewed the recently completed AJCU guidelines for Honors Programs at Jesuit colleges and universities.

In separate sessions, students exchanged ideas about departmental honors projects. Appropriate to the theme of the conference, it was bookended with lectures by two of SJU’s most esteemed Jesuit scholars: Rev. Patrick H. Samway, SJ and Rev. Joseph J. Feeney, SJ.

Moral discernment reflecting Christian values and a commitment to social justice are two of the key principles in Saint Joseph’s University’s mission statement. Recently, 14 students fully emulated these values when they embarked on an immersion and study tour of health care facilities in Nicaragua during the first week of January.

The trip, which was led by Peter Clark, S.J., professor of theology and health services and director of the Institute for Catholic Bioethics, and Jean Smolen, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and director of environmental science, encompassed a seven-day study tour that followed a packed itinerary consisting of visits to health care centers, meeting with the members of the Jesuit Volunteer Community and speaking with locals about life in rural Nicaragua. During the semester prior to the trip, students were enrolled in “Just Health Care in Developing Nations,” a service-learning course which was held during the fall semester and included the immersion trip to Nicaragua. The course was taught by Fr. Clark and Ann Marie Jursca Keffer, M.S.W., associate director of the Faith-Justice Institute.

In the classroom, “[the students] learn about public and global health, infectious disease, access to water, and sanitation,” says Keffer. “They gain an understanding of the realities of the hardships that people experience throughout the world.”

Participants put their health care knowledge to use when they visited hospitals in Nicaragua, where they discovered that private hospitals have access to advanced technology, but public hospitals have extremely limited access to much-needed medicine and equipment. Experiencing these discrepancies in person allowed students to understand the vast differences between both health care systems.

“The public hospitals had about six patients per room and the facilities appeared to be very unsanitary,” says Caitlin Callaghan ’13, a biology and French double major. “The private hospitals had state-of-the-art equipment and only one patient per room.”

Lucia Krahe ’13, an interdisciplinary health services major, notes that in the public hospitals there were terrible odors and no air conditioning, as well as cracked floors that harvested bacteria. “The rooms were overcrowded with patients and their visiting family members,” says Krahe.

Both Krahe and Callaghan agree that this experience gave them the inspiration to help provide medical care to third world countries.

“This trip has inspired me to dedicate my career to the poor and serve those who really need it,” says Krahe. “After traveling to a place like Nicaragua, I don’t know how I couldn’t go back.”

In addition to visiting hospitals, the students also met with representatives of Nicaraguan Haciendo Oportunidades Por la Educacion. This group provides education and job opportunities to youth who would otherwise be forced to work in garbage pits, making less than two dollars per day.

“There are young people who basically make a living by collecting material from the city dump,” Smolen says. “Through this experience, students were able to see the harsh conditions that many Nicaraguans are forced to live in, especially young children.”

A highlight of the trip for many was meeting Fernando Cardenal, S.J., the former Nicaraguan Minister of Education. Fr. Cardenal’s commitment to helping the people of Nicaragua led him to start a Literacy Campaign in 1980 that successfully taught basic reading skills to more than half a million people.

“We talk a lot about Jesuit ideals, but [Fr. Cardenal] didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk,” says Fr. Clark. “I think it was good for our students to meet someone of his caliber.”

Krahe was also deeply affected by her interactions with Fr. Cardenal. “The talk with Fr. Cardenal changed my life,” Krahe says. “He radiated love and humility and really inspired me to make a difference.”

How to become free and how to tell the story of emancipation were the focus of a CAS faculty panel presentation on January 31, 2013. More than 150 people attended this opening event in Saint Joseph’s year-long reflection on the meaning and obligations of freedom as part of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

In the long history of people’s struggles for freedom, personal accounts of bondage and emancipation have figured prominently in the ways many have fought for their own individual emancipation, and through their stories, encouraged others. Whether in the abolitionist movement, the struggle for female liberation, the fight for civil rights, or the pursuit of salvation from personal sin and collective guilt, the “emancipation narrative” has proved a powerful weapon in identifying moral wrongs and mobilizing conscience and courage to challenge any authority that would oppress or repress any people’s right to be free.

The panel presentation, “Emancipation Narratives: A Panel Discussion on how Oppressed Peoples Have Used Personal Accounts to Find Freedom and Fight for it,” featured five CAS faculty: Dr. Aisha Lockridge – Department of English, Dr. Melissa Logue – Department of Sociology and Africana Studies Program, Dr. Jo Alyson Parker – Department of English, Dr. Katherine Sibley – Department of History, and Dr. Bruce Wells—Department of Theology and Religious Studies. The program began with a welcome and opening prayer offered by Rev. C. Kevin Gillespie, S.J., University President. Dr. Randall Miller, Department of History, served as moderator.

Students listen attentively to the presentations

As Dr. Miller noted in his introductory remarks, from the days of slavery through the era of Jim Crow and today, people have had to speak up—for themselves and for others—to make freedom possible.

Dr. Parker and Dr. Sibley highlighted the stories of Jarena Lee, Maria Stewart, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Sojourner Truth. These women wanted freedom: to speak publicly about social causes in mixed audiences of men and women; to get an education beyond that available to women at the time; to vote and engage in civic matters; and, of course, to achieve equal treatment in marriage and in society.

Dr. Aisha Lockridge spoke about Harriet Jacobs’s biography

Dr. Lockridge spoke about Harriet Jacobs, who wrote her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudonym Linda Brent. At a time when most slaves were illiterate, her personal description of slavery’s atrocities in a self-published account was unprecedented. Jacobs recounts the relentless sexual advances of her owner; her relationship with a white lawyer, with whom she had two children; and her eventual escape from slavery. Jacobs’s narrative, Dr. Lockridge emphasized, undoes the myth of the civility of slave-owners.

Dr. Logue addressed the lingering impacts of slavery on a form of internalized oppression, manifested in the way that Black women choose to wear their hair and how those decisions affect their self-image and the way others regard them. Black hair texture and styles have served as visual demarcations of Black inferiority in relation to the standard that held white women up as the ideal. Although many Blacks in the U.S. continue to internalize this ideal, Dr. Logue pointed to how the stereotype has been challenged, emancipating Black women from these final vestiges of slavery.

President Gillespie sits with students to hear the narratives

Dr. Wells put the concept of freedom in the context of the famous Exodus story in the Hebrew Bible. Though it started out as a story celebrating political freedom, the story came to be used as a motivation for implementing certain social justice measures in ancient Israel. For example, it became the basis for the law that debts were to be cancelled and all debt slaves released every seven years. Thus, the Exodus tradition’s emphasis on emancipation was expanded to include freedom from economic or social constraints, thus enabling the Exodus story to continue to inspire the pursuit of justice in its many forms over the centuries up to this very day.

The program was sponsored by the Office of the President, the Office of Mission, and was part of the CAS Dean’s Colloquium Series.

A new program in the Department of Special Education at Saint Joseph’s University for preparing teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing recently received its letter of approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). It is the first fully online Deaf Education program in the state of Pennsylvania and one of only a few similar online programs in the nation.

The program will offer Hearing Impaired K-12 certification and has the following options:

• Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) Hearing Impaired K-12 certification (Graduate level coursework)
• Master of Science in Education of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing with PDE Hearing Impaired K-12 certification
• Master of Science in Education of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing with PDE Hearing Impaired K-12 certification and PreK-8 Special Education Certification
• Master of Science in Education of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing with PDE Hearing Impaired K-12 certification and 7-12 Special Education Certification

The program is considered a “comprehensive” program according to Council on Education of the Deaf (CED) national standards, which means that all communication philosophies will be addressed in the program (Total Communication, Auditory-Oral, and Bilingual-Bicultural ASL). For more information, contact Dr. Sam Slike, Director, Online Special Education Programs, 217 Merion Hall, at: sslike@sju.edu or 610-660-3007.

The 2012 College of Arts and Sciences magazine intellect earned a bronze “Cuppie” from the College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania (CUPRAP). The awards are presented in categories ranging from publications to social media sites, news articles to billboards, and are judged by a panel of senior-level public relations industry experts.

In today’s job market, students who have completed a meaningful internship have an effective way to distinguish themselves from others in the pool of more than 1.6 million students who receive a bachelor’s degree each year. Approximately 250-300 students in the College of Arts & Sciences engage in internships during a typical academic year. Although some internships carry three academic credits, all internships–credit-bearing or not– provide valuable experience and contacts for the student that enhance her or his future.

In recent years, the College has placed students in internships at Merck, Lockheed, Veterans Affairs, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Overbrook School for the Blind, and the Camden Center for Family Services, among many other venues. In the Philadelphia Internship, for example, students have worked for law firms and for the court system (e.g., U.S. District Court, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and some private law firms), for Non-Governmental Organizations (e.g., Committee of Seventy, Women’s Campaign International), and for political campaigns and political parties (e.g., Office of Senator Bob Casey, Representative Patrick Meehan’s District Office, McCain for President, Obama for President).

The diversity of internship experiences is vast. In what follows, we highlight a few of the internships from this past year:

Patrick Bishop ’13, a Theatre/Film Studies major with a concentration in Musical Theatre, recently completed an internship performing at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York City in a cabaret showcase of musical theatre solos and duets entitled “Here Right Now”. Industry professionals, including casting agents and directors, attended the session where Patrick performed a series of songs including “Goodbye” from Catch Me If You Can, “The World Will Remember Us” from Bonnie & Clyde and “Come Up To My Place” from Leonard Bernstein’s On The Town.

Tavon Whitener ’13 placed at the McClain Firm, Ardmore

Tavon Whitener ’13, a Political Science major, spent 10 hours a week during the Fall 2012 semester at the McClain Firm in Ardmore, PA, where Cary McClain served as his mentor. The McClain firm handles small claims, divorce, personal injury, DUIs, and much more. Tavon reports “I learned how a private attorney managed the work load of five lawyers—at the same time as he managed a small business. With the guidance of Cary’s paralegal, I assisted in filing legal briefs, scribing court proceedings, and filling out expungement and ARD [Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition] forms.” In addition to gaining firsthand experience of life as a lawyer, Tavon learned about work/family issues. In his own words, “I learned about life from a man who lived an interesting one. I was shown the personal qualities of a man who put family first and work second. . . . That dedication is exactly what made me appreciate my internship all the more. My legal internship was insightful as a person interested in pursuing law—but I valued it as an experience that taught me how to be a man who loves his family and worked hard to make them happy.”

Michelle Berton ’13 was an intern at ABA2Day Behavior Services

Michelle Berton ’13, a Psychology major, is currently interning as a behavior therapist for ABA2Day Behavior Services. She works one-on-one with children with a wide range of developmental, behavioral, and emotional disorders. Most of the children she works with have diagnoses on the Autism Spectrum and display a wide range of behaviors targeted for modification. As the acronym ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) suggests, her work entails providing specialized instructions that focus on a particular behavior targeted for improvement. In her own words, “Having the opportunity to intern at ABA2Day Behavior Services has provided me with invaluable experience working with children with a wide range of behavioral and developmental disorders. Interning here has allowed me to gain the hands-on experience you can’t get solely inside the classroom, and has made me more confident than ever that I want to work with child and adolescent populations in the future. Learning this now was vital in applying to graduate schools in Counseling Psychology and helped me immensely in narrowing down the programs I chose to apply to.”

Alex Galliani ’13 lived in Edinburgh in the Fall 2012 semester. while working at the Scottish Parliament. An internship of his own creation, he worked with his advisor to receive credit for two courses that counted toward his major. Much of the workload involved reading case-specific academic sources, keeping a journal of daily activities in the office, and composing a term paper that married the formerly abstract with the latterly tangible.

Alex Galliani ’13 created his own internship opportunity at the Scottish Parliament

In his own words, “More than anything else, I was struck by the intimacy of the Scottish Parliament’s office setting. Whereas friends of mine who have worked for U.S. state senators or the like rarely, if ever, met their representative, my desk was but a few feet from the Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) for whom I worked. Even closer was the work space of her only other full-time assistant. With just two other (part-time) constituency workers to speak of, everyone was expected to be a jack-of-all trades. As such, my work swept from creating a graphical representation of a newly created position’s responsibilities (solely for the First Minister’s personal reference), to preparing briefs for debates which ranged from co-housing for elderly citizens to treatment of circus animals, to shredding confidential documents and fetching coffee. I regularly shared lunch with Ministers, Cabinet Secretaries and consultants in the ‘canteen,’ a novelty that I’m not sure I would have enjoyed had I worked for any of the massive Departments in the US.”

Madges, W. Review of Philip A. Cunningham et al., Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships. InJournal of the American Academy of Religion, 2012; doi: 10.1093/jaarel/lfs070

Miller, R. and John J. Meko, Jr., “Soldiers’ Aid and Public Service,” in Barbara J. Mitnick, ed., The Union League of Philadelphia: The First One Hundred Fifty Years (Philadelphia: The Abraham Lincoln Foundation of the Union League of Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 159-83.

McNally, D. Exhibited three canvases at the CRIB, a residence for inner city students in Camden, run in conjunction with Hopeworks Camden: Crimson Highway I, Crimson Highway II, and Old Adam Meets the New, November 2012. In December of 2012, those canvases were replaced with three others: Father Forgive, They Don’t Know; Disarmed Virgin and Plaza de Mayo. Also in December, a painting was exhibited at a silent auction to support the St. Catherine Laboure Clinic for the Uninsured in Germantown, Two Directions Home.

Miller, R. “Intersections of Class and Race in the Creation of Old South Identities,” panel presentation, Southern Historical Association, November 2, 2012, Mobile, Alabama.

Samway, P. will give the annual Flannery O’Conner Memorial Lecture at Georgia College, Milledgeville, GA, on Tuesday, February 19, 2013. His topic: “‘I am back where I began’: Flannery O’Connor to her editor, Robert Giroux.” This lecture will be based on research that Father Samway did for his recently completed book-manuscript on O’Connor and Giroux.

Samway, P. will give the annal Boyle Lecture at Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL, on March 16th, 2013. His topic: “Flannery O’Connor’s Fictive World of Mystery and Manners.” He will visit classes to talk about the Sudanese refugees in Chad, the subject of his book, Educating Darfur Refugees: A Jesuit’s Efforts in Chad, and about the Jesuit grammar schools in Haiti. Father Samway is a member of SJU Project Haiti, whose aim is to help these particular schools.

Skolnick, A. J. “Empathy, disgust, and gender: The more women feel it, the more it’s gross.” Data Blitz talk presented at the 9th Annual Emotion Pre-Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference, January 2013, New Orleans, LA.

Warren, R. “The Damned Man with the Venerated Plan: The Complex Legacies of Agustin de Iturbide and the Iguala Plan.” In Celebrating Insurrection: The Commemoration and Representation of the Nineteenth-Century Mexican Pronunciamiento. Edited and with an Introduction by Will Fowler. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.